♪ give me just a little more time ♪ okay. all right. oh! [ female announcer ] the 2-in-1 swiffer sweeper uses electrostatic dry cloths to clean better than a broom. and its wet mopping cloths can clean better than a mop in half the time so you don't miss a thing. mom, have you seen my -- hey! hey! he did it. [ female announcer ] swiffer. better clean in half the time. or your money back. good morning from new york. i'm chris hayes. police are looking for someone they say fired a shot into the obama campaign field office in denver yesterday. no one was hurt, but people were inside the office at the time. police in libya say a car bomb placed underneath a patrol car exploded in a failed

assassination attempt in bends. i am joined by richard kim, my colleague. goldie tailor, contributor to our sister website, amy davidson, senior editor at "the new yorker." author of the close read blog at "the new yorker".com which has been absolutely essential reading for the last few months. the close read at "the new yorker".com. michael moynihan. cultural news editor at newsweek and "the daily beast." fantastic to have you all here. thursday's debate between vice president joe biden and paul ryan was a substantive contest between two men who were well briefed and on their game. conventional wisdom was twofold. biden needed to calm democrats. he needed to set the stage for his boss to regain his footing during his second debate with mitt romney this tuesday. i think biden accomplished that mission. i think what made the difference was that biden was aggressive, uninhibited with preoccupation by preserving his own image and

adept at leveraging his stature. the single best exchange biden wasted no time for calling out ryan for his apparent hypocrisy when it comes to stimulus funds. >> look at the $90 billion in stimulus. the vice president was in charge of seeing this. $90 billion in green pork to campaign contributors and special interest groups. >> i'm not allowed to show letters. go on our website. he sent me two letters saying, by the way, can you send me some stimulus money for companies here in the state of wisconsin. we sent millions of dollars. you know what -- >> you did ask for stimulus money. >> sure he did. >> on two occasions we advocated for constituents who were applying for grants. that's what we do. we do that for all constituents. >> i love that. this is such a bad program and he writes me a letter saying the reason we need this stimulus, it will create growth and jobs. >> my favorite part of that clip is the biden embellishing saying

he sent me the letter. he didn't actually write the letter to joe biden but it's such a gilding the lily moment. you imagine paul ryan taking out his iphone, joe, any way you could hook a brother up with some green contracts? all right. laider joe biden made an argument for democratic policy on social insurance based not on numbers or actuarial projerkt shuns but on the record of the two parties. >> choice in competition. we would rather have 50 million future seen jurors determine how their medicare is delivered to them versus 15 politicians. >> who do you believe, the a.m.a., somebody who has fought their life or somebody who would put in motion a plan who would knowingly cut cost you 6400 a year more to the cost of medicare. now they have a new plan, trust me, it's not going to cost you anymore. folks, follow your instincts on this one. >> i love that moment because

one of the things i've found -- i mean, if you imagined the mirror image of this. if you imagine the democrats running a national campaign for president in which they were going around saying, we are going to cut taxes for the rich the most. listen to us. we're going to cut taxes for the rich the most. you would say, that's not what you believe in. it's not what your record has been. why should we -- and so what's been amazing is to watch this battle happen over medicare. and joe biden just reduce it to i think what is the essence, which of these two parties do you really think is going to stand behind medicare in its current form. whatever paul ryan says about we're going to protect you, it's not going to be that bad, just look at the record and the vision and the ideological commitments. i don't think this is disingenuous. the different parties and coalitions have the records. >> that's why biden won. you were saying about shoring up democrats. he reminded them also not only that they could win but why they

were democrats and what they were fighting for and the that it's possible to make a strong argument for it. >> for the democratic position? >> yeah. >> i think the emotional argument there is actually quite clever because, i mean, the most soporophic moment of the debate is where paul ryan receded into numbers. he's a bit wonky. that is more effective. i was with people who were nerdy about this stuff during the debate and everyone was sort of looking around. good god, ryan. looking at the counter and saying, do you trust these guys, do you trust us? i think that was much more effective. >> that was a particularly good moment, i thought, for biden. the question 245 precethat prec was so tinged. the question that martha raddatz asked, we all know it's going broke, what are you going to do about it? they are not going broke. it's transfer of payments. for biden to remind people that

this is how these social programs work and this is why we have them i thought turned a question that had a right wing angle around in his favor. >> i think something much larger happened that night. if you take the position that the republican party has placed its bet on paul ryan, that it has heralded him as its intellectual leader of the party, that that is the person who is going to carry the banner, you know, into the next generation for this party, we learned that night that that house is a house of cards and joe biden blew it down. >> i didn't think he was that bad though. on balance, i mean -- and i say this independent of whether i agree with him or not. i think that the two, very two distinct styles of debating here. >> yes. >> one is blowing air horns and shooting guns, i am going to not look at you. i am going to be very serious. and i think that his command of the numbers, now we can get to the fact of whether these

numbers are right or not, but i think that he handled himself well. i didn't think that he kind of folded under the pressure of joe biden. do you agree? >> i don't think he was very good on the numbers. he was very vague on the numbers and he -- i mean, a couple of times she's asking him, tell me how this math works and he's just like, we're going to figure it out later. i think he -- the way he exceeded expectations is, you know, he knew when the afghan fighting season was and he sort of recited a couple of things that people thought were his weaknesses, but in what people thought were his strengths, really articulating a vision for the future of social programs and the budget and how that was all going to work, i thought he was surprisingly weak. >> i would say quickly that is in the way of the weakness of paul ryan in that debate was that there was somebody that was doing so much by wrorote. >> martha raddatz, she would ask follow up questions, it was the

moment in class where you read the cliff notes. >> it was revealing that he was actually weak on the numbers. he's known for being this sort of golden wonkoid washington. he's not running on the ryan blueprint. >> that's it. >> running on the romney plan. so the numbers he knows about medicare privatization, social security, all of that, he can't go out there and campaign on those. >> and that was one of the really interesting setups. i kind of want to make a con temporaryian point about specifics because we've been saying on msnbc, specifics, specifics don't add up. i think the more important thing, specifics are less important than what is the constituency of the two political coalitions and what are their commitments. we remember barack obama ran an entire primary campaign against the individual mandate. he was not -- that was the signature policy difference between he and hillary clinton. they must have had 40 debates in which all they talked about the individual mandate. he got in and chose the individual mandate because

that's what the world of center left wonk ri had established as the framework for health care. for me the reason the biden moment when he looks in the camera and says trust. the specifics are going to matter much less than who is em poe jurd when it comes time to actually govern. who's empowered in the house republican caucus who's calling the shots. who's empowered in mitch mcconnell and who's empowered in the world on conservative wonke wonkery. it is which political coalition you trust than what numbers are showing up. >> ryan was speaking to a constituency that doesn't really exist. the people who are never going to grow old, never going to be vulnerable. it's what mitt romney was saying. if you're over 55, don't listen. >> stop listening, yeah. >> and ryan was saying, for the old people who we've already made a contract with, that old contract is in place, but we've got a new one for people who are never going to need anything,

are never -- shall never going to be vulnerable in the way that people who are already old are. but those people aren't -- >> they're not a different kind of person, they're just in a different stage in the life cycle. >> those people know it too. >> there's a consistent problem with republicans addressing issues of spending. they're two things that they do have to address. both of those it's entitlements, medicare and medicaid, and defense spending. what do we get on either of those? sorry to be the libertarian on this. they're never addressed. you get squishy, vague things. they don't want to talk about things that will annoy people. >> they've made this totally corrupt from the standpoint of their own ideology, corrupt generational bargain. welfare state for the older voters and privatization for everyone else. there's no ideological -- >> they're also making the bet that these two people don't know each other. >> that's right. that's a great one. >> that grandma who is 75 is not

in tune or doesn't care about what's happening to her grandchildren who are 25 or 30. >> my grandmother never cared. that might be very specific to my family. >> someone like me is intensely worried about my social security dependent mom and whether or not she's going to have to go out and bargain for, you know, her medicare benefits or if i am going to have to get on the phone on her behalf and have -- or me pay the difference or that she does not have the difference available. >> this is such an important point because the idea that you can -- it's so cynical to me. it really bothers me, i have to say. it bothers me in the same way that scott walker's very cynical policy in wisconsin of we're going to except the firefighters unions and police unions because they support republicans and we can sort of divide and conquer. this sort of corrupt, stop listening if you're over 55. who cares for the people over 55? their kids. it's not like they're

uninvolved. so if your 75-year-old mother is going to have to shop around for health insurance, guess who's going to be doing it, voters of america who are 40 years old. you are. >> it's transactional. it's also saying that the reason that we have a commitment to the older people isn't because these policies have been -- >> because we've promised. >> we've made a promise, we'll keep that but we're going to make a new one. >> this is going to your point. who is the constituency for privatizing medicare? who is calling to privatize social security? it's not vst segments of the population. it's the libertarian wing, private equity, hedge fund managers who stand to make billions, trillions if that is accomplished. that's who you should talk to. >> social security entered the debate for the first time. it was one of the few issues, abortion, social security that we hadn't seen discussed. social security entered the debate. it was a fascinating moment because it was a moment where paul ryan 2.0 had to argue with

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you are one of the few lawmakers to stand with president bush when he was seeking to partially privatize social security. >> for younger people. what we said then and what i've always agreed is let younger americans have a voluntary choice of making their money work faster for them within the social security system. >> we will not, we will not privatize it. if we had listened to romney -- governor romney and the congressman during the bush years, imagine where all those seniors would be now if their money had been in the market. their ideas are old and their ideas are bad. >> their ideas are old and their ideas are bad. straightforward. the social security moment to me was fascinating precisely because romney was able to pull

off something in his debate that ryan couldn't quite do because romney could -- romney had pandered to the right of the party. he had done it largely rhetorically even though he had not been a really hard right governor of massachusetts because he was constrained by democratic legislature and so he could just forget everything he said on the stump for a while, but paul ryan, his whole career has been being a creature of the world of conservative wing think tanks. he had this record. he crafted a social security privatization plan that was to the right of the plan proposed by george w bush and he couldn't just run away from it and say, no, no, i don't believe in that anymore. he ended up having to sort of defend these things. i think that got him into a lot more trouble than romney got into. >> yeah. i mean, i think that's right. the idea that, you know, sort of privatization or private accounts is an incredibly radical thing, you can argue against this. sweden where i lived for many years has private accounts. it doesn't have to be.

it doesn't have to be this boondoggle that benefits private equity. look, we've been arguing the specifics of his plan, he didn't make the case in any sense. there was kind of a stuttering looking around dazed -- >> partly because he couldn't, right? that's exactly the problem. he couldn't forthrightly make the case because that's not the ticket's position. >> it's not that he's incapable of it. he was certainly capable of doing it. it wasn't that this wasn't part of his debate prep with ted olson, he didn't want to get into that for a variety of political reasons which showed. >> there's still the misconception there, i think the moderate or and to an extent biden played into it. social security is like a private account. like a 401 k that you've put money into it. it's actually not what social security is. social security is you paying for the older generations' retirement. when you get older the younger generation will pay for your retirement. it's the epitome of the social contract. there is a problem because there

are going to be more older people than younger people. it's not like the financial worries are irrelevant. >> you know what i found interesting in the broad context of the debate when we talk about social insurance which has been the central theme in a weird way even though joblessness is rampant and we have this, is that people have different conceptions of those two programs as essentially there's an account somewhere with my name on it because you get the statement from the social security administration and because when you get your paycheck it says this is how much you put in social security, this is how much you put into medicare, other government programs, that's just government, right? people feel they have an ownership of those social insurance programs. it actually means that people who are ideologically exposed to not like redistribution love those programs. you see interviews with republicans all the time around keep the government hands off my medicare, that's my -- i have paid into that thing and then i'm going to get it back, right? i've paid into the system, i'm he getting it back. it made me think maybe we should line item everything else. maybe you have have the spot on payroll. this is the roads.

this is the cushion if you ever use your job and need food stamps that you're paying into these accounts. >> i do. i think that's really the crux of it. keep your hands off of my stuff. >> right. >> so when you hear them call the president a socialist, what it really means is don't give my hard earned money to those other people. and when you look at things like social security, when you look at things like medicare, even medicaid, you know, other entitlement programs, you know, other social infrastructure, roads, schools is a big piece of this thing, you are taking my hard earned money and you're giving it to those other people who aren't working as hard as me. and republicans have built their entire ideology on this, you know, over what looks like generations now. and it just isn't going to work out for them. >> well, but i think that's because the power of social security and medicare is precisely the power of people not viewing it in that way. >> it's also why ryan had a harder time than romney did.

romney, every contradiction he could go back to saying the states are laboratories, we were experimenting in massachusetts. this work for massachusetts, i'm he not saying i'm going to do it to anybody else. ryan has spent his whole career in congress. he spent his whole career writing letters to get stimulus money on one side and on the other talking about federal programs and what he wants to do with them. >> the -- >> i would say just to that point, i mean, you don't find a lot of passion for paul ryan amongst libertarians. very interesting thing too because right when you come out of the gate you have the iran tag. this is an objectivist nightmare. you look at actual libertarians, they point out the same things that joe biden is pointing out. they point out bailout stuff. >> he voted for t.a.r.p. he voted for the auto rescue plan. >> right. both of them. they would be very disa ipt poed in that. social security too. which was revealed recently.

>> not only that, we dug up a clip of him making the case for stimulus under bush in terms that were directly kind of counter cyclical cansian terms. this is important, it came from michael grumwald. he voted for a $700 billion stimulus. so when you say the -- when you attack the recovery act as he now does and as republicans do as a preposterous notion, as a ridiculous out of left field idea that you would borrow money from china, the difference between the republicans and the democrats on this was $130 billion. they voted for a $700 billion stimulus. what passed was $830 billion. they weren't that far apart. the other big issue that we had not seen in the debates that came up, choice abortion. right after this.

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it's weird to call it women's issues. it is primarily women's issues, but it's an issue for everyone, over choice and contraception and birth control and access to because it has been a big issue in the campaign and it didn't get any treatment at all in the first debate. as we got through the first hour of the second debate i saw this tie building on twitter. this is crazy, we need to talk about this. martha raddatz did end up asking a question about abortion. i think a lot of people felt and i share the feeling it was bizarrely phrased. it was asking each of the candidates who are both catholics how does your personal faith affect your view on abortion. this was paul ryan's response. >> you want to ask basically why i'm pro life. it's not simply because of my catholic faith. that's a factor, of course, but it's also because of reason and science. you know, i think about 10 1/2 years ago my wife jan and i went

to mercy hospital in janesville where i was born for our seven week ultrasound for our first born child, and we saw that heartbeat. our little baby was in the shape of a bean, and to this day we have nick named our first born child liza bean. i understand this is a difficult issue and i respect people who don't agree with me on this, but the policy of a romney administration will be to oppose abortion with the exceptions for rape, incest, and life of the mother. paul ryan once said the exceptions for life of a mother was a loophole you could drive a mack truck through. so, again, another place where he is different than the ticket. joe biden answered after ryan and this was his response. >> with regard to abortion, i accept my church's position on abortion as a, what we call a defete doctrine. life begins at conception. that's the church's judgment.

i accept it in my personal life, but i refuse to impose it on equally devout christians, muslims, jews. i just refuse to impose that on others, unlike my friend here, the congressman. i do not believe that we have a right to tell other people, women, they can't control their body. it's a decision between them and their doctor in my view and the supreme court, i'm not going to interfere with that. >> why did i find this exchange so unsatisfying? there's something about it. is it just because this is the most trod territory in all of american politics. if you give people five minutes you get essentially everything you expect and have heard before? >> you know, i think it's because there weren't more follow ups. i did not have a problem with the question and the way it was framed. it is the way a lot of people think about it. i did feel that it came so late in the debate and it just got compressed. i think they were running out of

time. biden was -- although he was disciplined in a way, this is probably the one section in which he didn't laugh at all or -- >> i think that was a good thing, right? >> that was a good thing. >> let me tell ya. >> what a hilarious question. >> he wasn't quite as disciplined about saying very quickly, i'm a catholic but then getting to the not imposing and getting through exactly what ryan and romney are proposing and what they're suggesting. he did eventually get to it, but the other thing that's strange about the abortion exchange and that does make it unsatisfying is the idea that only having, you know, restrictions for rape, incest, and life of the mother is somehow moderate because just because it's -- ryan is more extreme than romney on it, but that's pretty extreme in itself. >> exactly. >> and that's what -- you know, i think biden did a very good job defending, you know, the sort of principle of not imposing the government on

women's bodies. but he didn't really tie ryan or romney to the extreme right of the gop which has passed all of these ultrasound bills and restrictions on abortion that make it de facto impossible to get it in the states. >> i think there were 1100 pieces of legislation that went through statehouses that sought to restrict and severely limit women's access to reproductive health care. i think that the bigger issue for me in not having any of these social issues, whether they were women's reproductive rights, education and other things mentioned in the first debate and then even as an add on in the second debate is that people made the -- i call it the excuse, well, this is about jobs, as if social issues are not also economic issues, especially reproductive choice. that when women have history -- when women have control over their reproductive choice, it also lends to their control over their economic destiny and that's really, i think, what

this is about. for a party that portends to say that we want smaller and less government, you know, they certainly want to put an awful lot of area between me and my doctor. >> what i find frustrating, marsha blackburn was on msnbc after the debate. she responded to chris matthews. the other day on twitter i was talking about abortion and a lot of conservatives said, why are you liberals always talking about abortion. conservatives in the republican party don't want to talk about this. ryan had this big sigh and this kind of gathering himself moment after he was asked the question and yet what they are doing at the statehouse level or the house, it's not like they've stopped battling. they want to legislate on it, they just don't want to talk about it. it seems to me that's unfair. if you believe in this, go out there and make the case. make the case. the state parties are doing a ton of restriction on abortion. there's 38 bills that ryan's co

sponsored restricting abortion. the house republicans won on the tea party deficit and the first thing they did was try to defund planned parenthood. ryan said something incredibly important. we don't want unelected judges making these decisions. that means overturning roe v. wade. that's what they want. >> i want to play a clip of the one moment the supreme court came out. i want to hear from you, michael, right after this break. ♪ [ male announcer ] jill and her mouth have lived a great life. but she has some dental issues she's not happy about. so i introduced jill to crest pro-health for life. selected for people over 50. pro-health for life is a toothpaste that defends against

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and the family car to do an experiment. we put a week of her family's smelly stuff all in at once to prove that febreze car vent clips could eliminate the odor. then we brought her family to our test facility to see if it worked. [ woman ] take a deep breath, tell me what you smell. something fresh. a beach. a clean house. my new car. [ woman ] go ahead and take your blindfolds off. oh!! hahahaha!!! look at all this garbage!!! [ male announcer ] febreze car. eliminates odors for continuous freshness, so you can breathe happy. we're talking about abortion entering the debate for the first time in the first two debates. we've seen about an hour into the debate on thursday night with martha raddatz and each of the -- ryan and biden both gave responses outlining pro life and pro choice positions. then there was a discussion of roe v. wade and the court. we've talked about this.

we did a whole supreme court preview. the fifth vote upholding roe v. wade, ruth bader againstberg is a 7 p 3-year-old cancer survivor. here's the exchange between ryan and biden on that topic. >> we don't think that unelected judges should make this decision that people through their elected representatives and reaching a consensus in society through the democratic process should make this determination. >> the court, the next president will get one or two supreme court nominees. that's how close roe v. wade is. just ask yourself, with robert bork being the chief advisor of the court for mr. romney, who do you think he's likely to appoint? do you think he's likely to appoint someone like scalia or someone else on the court, far right, that would outlaw

planned -- excuse me, outlaw abortion? i suspect that would happen. i guarantee you that will not happen. we pick two people. we pick people who are open minded, they've been good justices, so keep an eye on the supreme koufrt? >> was there a litmus test on them? >> there was no litmus test. we picked people with an open mind and no agenda. >> they said this should be in the democratic process. if you believe it should be in the democratic process, then the democratic process is a process who then produces a process who chooses the nominee. it's much more transparently democratic if there is a litmus test. we've shrouded it behind this norm of no litmus test. then we should know and we know what the two parties' positions are. >> of course it's a litmus test. >> of course there is. my point. >> i mean, there was a litmus test for bork who had views that were a bit bonkers.

watching this i noticed something. joe biden is telling the supreme court that two of you might die. two that might not make it. the judges are going, god, is it going to be me? who's next? this is terrifying. >> the other thing he's doing is the exact same thing he did on social security which is basically saying who do you trust on this? who do you trust? it's also going back to also the -- his offering of the 47% and ryan's really unsatisfying answer on that. it's like, do you see people this way or do you not see people this way? and he managed to do that in a few points especially. >> and i thought him saying it that clearly, it kind of violated some of the political norms about how we talk about the court. you saw ryan saw an opportunity to pounce. are you saying there's a litmus test? for some reason we've decided that a litmus test is something we can't have. it's a bizarre fiction. everyone who's operating in the world, there's one party that's

pro life, one that's pro choice. they'll appoint justices. >> it's a litmus test and polite sizing. of course we are. that's what the whole election is about. >> the republicans are in a very difficult position when it comes to the supreme court, publicly, politically. their right flank holds up people like scalia as absolute heroes. >> scott brown. >> like the big evil guy, now. that was the moment in the brown warren debate where he mentioned alito as his hero. you can see warren immediately cackle with glee at the opening. that's the fissure they have to gulf talking to their right wing constituency and also appealing to independents and moderates. >> when you were talking before the break about specificity, it's an obvious point. one that needs to be reiterated. this vacillating position on abortion, whether it's from massachusetts to iowa the other day, it's not going to be sort of a theme we're going to carry. and then back to this debate with paul ryan.

the reason one wants to talk about this, they haven't formulated a coherent answer on this. >> he's tried to outsource it to every other agency except than his. it's not a decision i would make, the court would make. who is appointed by? there's no legislation i know of that would overturn -- >> there would be no litmus test. >> the loss in the section was really asking them what about a woman in this situation. imagine a woman who is going through this. todd akin, the whole idea of a rape victim who is pregnant or even a woman whose life is -- >> the part about this is that paul ryan was supposed to fix this question for mitt romney. mitt romney over the course of his political career pro choice, you know, few exceptions, legal, down to this very draconian place where he wants to overturn roe v. wade but i'm not going to push any legislation on my agenda, paul ryan was supposed to add to this ticket a level of

conservative bonafites to make certain that evangelicals trusted mitt romney on this question. he didn't fix it. he's made it worse and i think that you're going to find, and i don't know what the polls are saying about this, i think you're going to find that voting against, barack obama, yes is an enthusiasm pusher for some on the right, but this question will keep some of them at that point ped down. >> i think he fixed it on the right. i think the problem is the position paul ryan has is not a popular position in the country. in the platform it's advocacy of an amendment to the constitution that would grant personhood 14th amendment rights to a fetus, to a fertilized egg. i mean, that's an extreme position which is -- that's the official position of the republican party. politics can be bitter and nasty. why that's a good thing coming up next.

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my story of the week. the beauty of process. abc's martha raddatz did i thought on the whole a pretty good job moderating thursday night's vice presidential debate particularly when asking questions on her area of expertise, foreign policy. talk about that in a second. her final question about the negativity and sortedness bothered me. >> i recently spoke to a highly decorated soldier who said that this presidential campaign has left his dismayed. he told me, quote, the ads are so negative and they are all tearing down each other rather than building up the country. what would you say to that american hero about this campaign and at the end of the day are you ever embarrassed by the tone? >> that soldier, of course, isn't alone. lots of americans feel the same way. i've heard the same thing from random voters i've interviewed in every election i've covered.

it's supposed to bemoan the nastiness of the negativity and thrust of the electoral politics. it's an impulse we should resist. it contains the kernel of an insidious view of manifold ways that we as human beings channel and resolve conflict in a nonviolent passion. the same distaste for the plotting, klunky, flat out ugliness of process in raddatz' question was in paul ryan's answer on the u.n. based diplomacy in iran. >> when barack obama was elected they had enough material to make one bomb. now they have enough for five. we've had four different sanctions, three from the bush administration, one here, and the only reason we got it is because russia watered it down. >> it is true the u.n. can be maddeningly dysfunctional. it's an accident of history and that russia's objections to any and all u.s. proposals can seem

to americans truculant and spiteful. what exactly is the alternative? the answer is violence, war, death and bloodshed which brings us to the announcement yesterday from the nobel prize committee of a somewhat unusual choice. the european union. the announcement occasioned a whole lot of snark state side. not a good sign if the e.u. asks that its nobel prize be paid in some currency you other than the euro. jeffrey goldberg tweeted, next year the nobel committee should consider awarding the peace prize to puppies. dave wooegle, this guy right here, nobel me. the team at fox and friends also mocked the committee's decision. >> the nobel committee praised the e.u. for six decades to promote peace and democracy in europe. >> really?

fantastic. >> we should have the sports writers do it. >> better opinion than the cy young. >> the e.u. can only hope there's a cash award. they could use some underwriting. >> it's true. europe isn't in the best shape. the limitations are causing institutional dysfunction, wide 13reds mess ri and threatening to terminate the entire project. greece submerged in the misery of austerity is seeing brutally violent beatings to political enemies. but to mock the e.u. is to lose sight of what a tremendous accomplishment it has been. on a small patch of earth that was site of some of the most horrifying, war, saidism, genocide in the history of human life on the planet. in a span of six years at least 40 million people perished on europe's soil and the e.u. was constructed as a means of bringing piece and stability to a continent that had more or less known only war. the european union doesn't have many defenders but mockery of the e.u. rests on the same

impulse we see in the laments of the nastiness of a presidential campaign and the huffing and puffing and inadequacy of iran diplomacy. in each case the process may be messy, ugly, tortuous, but it's almost always better than the all turn in a i have it. conflict is part of the human condition. there are limited resources, different interests, cultures, tribes, value systems with different conceptions of the good, vastly different priorities and first principles. democracy is a system we've come up with to resolve those inevitable conflicts, but there is no such thing as a placid equilibrium where they disappear or are only articulated in the gentlist of fashions. that is the point. conflict is the underlying conflict of human society. the question is what we do with it. it's only a slight exaggeration to say we either have people killing each other in the streets like dogs or we have people running attack ads against each other. buyer okay kra si, the back and forth of campaign ads are

largely gloriless enterprises. in the grand sweep of history they are beautiful, sublime achievements. they represent nearly unthinkable progress and points the way towards a future of full human flour ribbing. how the debate over democracy, u.n. played out at thursday's debate right after this. [ male announcer ] we got a mom and the family car to prove that febreze car vent clips could eliminate the odor. [ woman ] take a deep breath, tell me what you smell. something fresh. a clean house. [ woman ] take your blindfolds off. oh!! hahahaha!!! [ male announcer ] febreze car. eliminates odors, so you can breathe happy.

joining us at the table now is michael hastings, operator of the operators. contributing editor to rolling stone. >> thank you for having me. >> i want to talk about -- we're going to talk, you've been doing some great reporting on libya. we'll talk about that. first i want to talk about foreign policy debate. it's the first time we got to see foreign policy debated. the first time it was only domestic policy. i thought it was really strange and illuminating, the foreign policy debate. to me there were two main take

aways. one was the critique leveled by paul ryan of the foreign policy of the obama administration was essentially stylistic. that the foreign policy rhetoric is insufficiently tough, that there isn't this performance of american toughness that is insufficient to paul ryan and here's a mon taj of how that sounded. >> we wouldn't refer to bashar assad as a reformer. we're not projecting weakness abroad. we shouldn't have called bashar assad a reformer. this invites weakness. >> the bashar assad a reformer. that was his only line on syria policy. largely was rhetoric kalt. now when you talk the three hot spots in the world, not necessarily in the entire world, which is iran, the war in afghanistan and syria, there wasn't as far as i can tell any policy disagreement that they were leveling. take a look.

>> these are the most crippling sanctions in the history of sanctions. >> thank hechks we had these sanctions in place. >> what more would they do other than put american boots to the ground. >> nobody is proposing to send troops to syria. >> we are leaving in 2014, period. >> we agree with the administration on their 2014 transition. >> michael, what did you make of this? >> when i saw paul ryan talk about afghanistan, it was like watching bambi on ice. it's like he had a boy scout capping p trip there once and saw the mountains and thought he was an expert. look, very specifically. this is -- ryan got really tripped up on afghanistan. he said, look, we support the administration's position of a 2014 drawdown and then a few minutes later he said, oh, but we're opposed to deadlines. >> you cannot say both, right? >> right. then he tried to level the criticism that, oh, we should -- that biden and the white house should listen to the military commanders more. that also means you're going to

try to expand the war and add more troops. that's not popular. we had to back away from that as well. >> this is one of the dodges that they used in their afghanistan policy which has been totally incoherent. i disagree with barack obama's afghan policy when he campaigned for president. i disagree. you know, i'm no expert on this. i'm saying where i'm coming from. i disagreed on the surge of adding more troops. i think we should bring home the troops faster than 2014. that's where i stand. the critique of it from the romney camp, they had hidden behind a procedural decision of essentially the general should make a decision. that's a dodge way of leveling a critique and not advocating the thing you apparently want which is to stay longer. >> exactly. and i think when romney and ryan have talked about afghanistan, they've gotten themselves in trouble because they cannot say they want to stay longer. and then the other response, listen to the generals. what if you -- what if you disagree with the generals? are they going to listen to the generals if they want to stay for another ten years? that's unclear. >> the other thing going back to

the stylistic element of that question in the debate, i think it's because we didn't actually have a foreign policy debate. we had a debate about u.s. military policy and interceptions in a free country. >> that's a good point. >> interviewed and not interviewed. >> climate change, mexico. >> china. >> brazil, china, india. any of those things. >> i want to hear more from you on foreign policy after we take a quick break. and of battery more emergency workers trust in their maglites: duracell. one reason: duralock power preserve. it locks in power for up to 10 years in storage. guaranteed. so, whether it's 10 years' of life's sunny days... or... the occasional stormy one... trust goes a long way. duracell with duralock. trusted everywhere. fire bad! just have to fire roast these tomatoes. this is going to give you a head start on your dinner. that seems easier [ female announcer ] new progresso recipe starters.

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they have teachers... ...with a deeper knowledge of their subjects. as a result, their students achieve at a higher level. let's develop more stars in education. let's invest in our teachers... ...so they can inspire our students. let's solve this. good morning from new york, i'm chris hayes. here with my colleague richard kim. gold did i tailor from our sister website thegrio.com. michael haste tings and michael moynihan from newsweek and "the daily beast." we were discussing thursday night's vice presidential debate between joe biden and paul ryan specifically the foreign policies areas. there was a lot of atmospherics. a lot of stylistic. very little substantive critique

as far as i can tell. when you bore down. you made a point about essentially paul ryan endorsing the afghanistan strategy. >> yes. paul ryan said that president obama's afghanistan surge was a huge success, right? now that's probably for two reasons. a, you have a candidate saying the center piece was a huge success. b, it wasn't a huge success. on both grounds he was off base. >> and this to me strikes at something very deep about the politics of foreign policy, which is that the nation is war weary. one thing i think is positive sounds weird to say but one thing i think is progress in a certain way is that we've become much less enthusiastic about the possibility of military intervention being a solution to foreign policy problems. you saw ryan have to constantly say, no, we don't want war. no one wants war. that was the sort of -- >> right. >> -- so that i think is progress in terms of how the american public opinion posture is. at the same time the republican

party has a huge political opening to be essentially more of an anti-war party because i think a lot of their base is there. i mean, the american public wants us out of afghanistan and yet they continue to be completely captured by the neoconservative kind of brain trust within the party that won't let them take that position. >> i think this is a bit of a split on a sort of real list neocon stuff. there was a piece in the washington post about the romney camp taking advice from both sides. you can see this in the confused nature of the foreign policy. but on the debate, again, the vagueness of it. saying, well, you agree in 2014, we do too, but and then there is that sort of -- it's very, very difficult for the romney campaign who desperately wants me to say we are not like this other guy who you don't like much, but we are. >> right. that's right. exactly. >> on the afghanistan time line, same thing. look, there is the issue of how many troops remain after 2014, 15,000, 10,000, what their

abilities and what their duties will be. iran, for instance, it's like, well, i mean, there's -- we -- joe biden and barack obama have said that we will not allow iran to get a nuclear weapon. they disagreed on where this is and where the intelligence is on this. look, if you want paul ryan to be specific about it, what will you do? will you go to war? that's biden hectoring him. i think there's an opportunity for the left of the democratic party to say the same thing to joe biden. when we say we will not allow it either, what will you do? >> that's right. >> there's so many parallels. >> i agree. in some ways i thought the foreign policy discussion, what's interesting to me is that i think the republican party rhetorically at least to foreign policy has moved to the left a little bit. they're less so explicitly mill tar ris stick. they're still quite -- they still want to beat up democrats for being soft, but they're slightly chasing rhetorically. i don't think substancetivelily. the democratic party has moved to the right. they're more hawkish.

they basically con verbaled on this middle piece. >> i do think it is ironic. i'm a former marine. it is surprising to me to see at this time in our history that it is democrats who seem to be stronger on foreign policy. it is democrats who seem to be owning the war question when we talk about these things. it's also very ironic to me when you really look at if you want to call it an obama doctrine, that it really is a doubling down on the bush years, that this policy is really no different. in fact, he has gone further in terms of doing things like, you know, nearly or reducing the significance of al qaeda around the globe. you know, that you can say that, you know, although bush talked hard, you know, this president worked it out and so these talking points became walking points. i think that is the sort of main difference. it's really difficult to make a substantive disagreement with this guy. what you're really zg -- >> not from the left. the point is it's hard from the

right. >> hard from the right. >> that's two different things. >> it's sort of ridiculous. it was like who can be more ma cho on it. the obama administration has been incredibly aggressive against iran. these are the toughest sanctions. they have waged actual -- >> cyber warfare. and let me also note just to register this, we're going to talk about this, we'll do a preview of the foreign policy debate here at this table, i want to put in people's mind, it's a really open question how moshl bli justifiable the sanction regime is. we should talk about if the sanctions con strain more, who are they hurting? they're going to hurt average iranian citizens who we say and we should be in solidarity with. the question from a moral perspective, how much pain can we squeeze out of the iranian people for a government we all acknowledge they haven't chosen. whether that's going to be effective. those are big open questions not being asked now. >> that's a very big point. that's a level of nuance you

won't get debated unfortunately. while i agree with the sanctions. fantastic. they're crippling. the first thing i'm thinking of is 1998. famous madeleine al bright interview on "60 minutes" and the complaint of what the sanctions did to the iraqi people. if you are framing the debate as if -- you know, after 9/11 a piece was yiten in the "new york times." if you want to find a very pro american country in the region, go to iran. that might surprise you. >> it's very true. >> very true, i think. and if this is having that effect on the iranian people, that's a question the people need to discuss. >> as a strategic question, not just a moral question. >> i think there is a substantive distinction on iran but it's not one they can say publicly. here's what it is. obama administration officials do not want to go to war with iran. what john bolton says in private, john bolton who's one of romney's top advisors, they want another war with iran. >> this is important. this is really important, that

the different -- the actual differences are being obscured by the rhetoric. now there's a moment that i thought was very interesting in which raddatz got ryan to admit daylight between him and the israelis which is very interesting. it's a golden rule in american policy for reasons that i think are not quite justifiable that one cannot have any daylight between american policy and israeli policy on these issues. they're talking about the time line for an acquisition of a weapon on the part of iran. take a look. >> you both saw benjamin netanyahu hold up that picture of a bomb with a red line and talking about the red line being in spring so can you solve this? if the romney/ryan ticket is elected, can you solve this in two months before spring and avoid nuclear -- >> we ka debate a time line. we can debate the time line. whether it's that short a time or longer. i agree that it's probably

longer. >> that was an interesting moment. i didn't get a lot of pickup. basically he's saying in a netanyahu is wrong, that netanyahu is exaggerating the threat of the time line. and there was this bizarre back and forth, right, about who is closer to bebe netanyahu. >> friends of 39 years. >> joe biden is like, you know, are you kidding? the guy and i sit in the sauna together, you know what i mean? i've held his hand while he puked. what are you talking about, bebe netanyahu. we're as close as it is. >> ryan, this is a shift actually in the romney/ryan campaign. they've started to use the word capability for the threshold. >> very important. >> that's a very ambiguous standard. they're not saying have nuclear weapons, they're saying the capability. >> everyone should be clear. this is one of the things where there is a policy difference that's being obscured by the rhetoric. the debate largely between the obama administration and netanyahu's folks as far as i can understand as i follow this is the question is the red line a weapon or is the red line a capability. the capability is before actually having a weapon and much more haze zilly defined?

is that more or less -- >> that's my understanding. there's a broader sense of whether would an obama administration support israel as opposed to a romney administration? that is a real debate and a real question people are asking. i think if there is one to attack, obama would go along with it in the end. >> the intractability of syria was another issue that was on the table. i think the reason that is so -- i thought that was an interesting exchange because, again, they want to critique what the administration is doing in syria. they want to say you're standing by while people are being killed and they are essentially doing that. there's been some diplomatic efforts. basically the world is watching people be slaughtered and that also, i think, again, i'm not a foreign policy expert, my understanding is that's probably the best policy as well. there's diplomatic things we can do. it's incredibly difficult to come out and say that because it is so horrifying what assad is doing, but -- and that's why that was such a bizarre and sort of tortured exchange.

that's were paul ryan kept saying you called him a reformer as if that was the entirety of the critique. >> it was a bipartisan consensus that assad was sort of coming back. >> "vogue" magazine. >> yeah. >> what poll are they on politically. >> what do you think of the syrian exchange? >> the syrian exchange was interesting because you basically have paul ryan saying to the administration that, you know, we would like to provide weapons to the rebels, who these rebels are, we don't know. the -- joe biden can't respond to this in one particular way. there's a lot of reports kind of trickling out that this might already be happening. >> right. right. joe biden can't exactly say, you know, that's what we're doing in a kind of stage whisper. but, you know, the policy, it is very, very difficult to see this sort of bloodshed, to watch this front line documentary. what that underscored, which i think is a very important point, is something after 9/11 when people were talking about

occupying countries as if it was germany and japan in 1945, you see the complexities not only of syria, libya, etc. not only do we not know who these fighters are but we understand and everyone acknowledges this, it's about how big this is, that salofus are coming in and they're fighting with sort of more democratic reformers. is there somebody that has a booth with ak 47s on it. tell me about your ideology. that doesn't happen. that's going to be hugely problematic. >> one of the other things we're seeing in syria is incredibly messy, there's been great reporting on it, the power vacuum and the transition across the middle east, particularly in syria, does create opportunity for jihadist and salofus to gain power and that brings us to the other hot spot where this has happened and where it's happened for americans serving abroad. we'll talk about that.

richard, thank you. >> thank you. >> the evolving story of what happened in libya coming up next. look...is only the beginni. ♪ ♪ introducing a stunning work of technology. ♪ introducing the entirely new lexus es. and the first ever es hybrid. this is the pursuit of perfection.

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racheted up his attacks on the obama administration's changing accounts about the attack that killed four americans in benghazi, libya. the new accounts come after a week in which house republicans came back early from vacation to hold a hearing on the attack in libya. martha raddatz kicked off thursday's debate asking vice president biden about the attack. >> wasn't this a massive intelligence failure, vice president biden. >> what it was was a tragedy, martha. chris stevens was one of our best. we lost three other americans. i can make absolutely two commitments to you and all the other american people. one, we will find and bring to justice the men who did this

and, secondly, we will get to the bottom of it. whatever -- wherever the facts lead us, wherever they lead us we will make clear to the american public because whatever mistakes are made will not be made again. >> this benghazi issue would be a tragedy in and of itself but unfortunately it's indicative of a broader problem. what we're watching on our tv screens is the unraveling of the obama foreign policy which is making it more chaotic and us less safe. >> it's been over a month since the attack in benghazi and the details of what happened there are still trickling out tai by day. let's start from the beginning. it can be a little confusing. on september 11th a group of egyptians gathered outside the embassy in cairo. they scaled down the embassy walls and tore down the flag. that protest was in response to a 14 minute youtube film. hours later it was reported that the u.s. consulate in benghazi had also been attacked. on september 12th, the next day, the state department confirmed

that chris stevens, u.s. ambassador to libya, and three others had been killed. president obama condemned the attacks. secretary of state hillary clinton addressed the attack in benghazi and the protests in cairo explicitly linking the two together both as reactions to the video. >> some have sought to justify this vicious behavior along with the protest that took place at our embassy in cairo yesterday as a response to inflammatory material posted on the internet, but let me be clear, there is no justification for this. none. >> on september 14th white house press secretary jay carney attributed all of the unrest throughout the region to the youtube video. >> the unrest we've seen around the region has been in reaction to a video that muslims -- many muslims find offensive, and

while the violence is reprehensible and unjustified, it is not a reaction to the 9/11 anniversary that we know of or to a u.s. policy. >> five days after the attack in libya that happened on september 16th, susan rice went on five sunday talk shows, not this one, and reaffirmed this position. >> our current assessment is that what happened in benghazi was, in fact, initially a spontaneous reaction to what had just transpired hours before in cairo, almost a copy cat of the demonstrations against our facility in cairo, which were prompted, of course, by the video. >> three days later on september 19th a number of administration officials began to describe the attack on benghazi as a terrorist attack. by september 27th defense secretary leon panetta said it became clear the attack was planned. on tuesday of this week the state department explicitly contradicted the story told by the administration saying there

had been no protests outside the consulate in benghazi. the attack continues to be a clear political issue. it became clear that the story that we heard, the american people, in wake of the attack was simply not accurate. amy davidson, senior editor of the new yorker is back at the table. good to have you back. there are two issues here. i want to kind of set -- there are three issues. i want to kind of separate them out. there is i think a completely preposterous demagoguic attack by the romney/ryan campaign was due to inviting weakness. in fact, attempts on u.s. embassies spiked during the reagan administration. it doesn't seem to correlate in any way. i want to put that to the side because i don't think that's a serious charge. here's the u.s. attacks on diplomatic targets we see during bush one, a huge spike. they're relative to history quite low under president obama. so let's just put aside the kind of real crass use of this as a cujole to go after him.

there are two substantive issues. let's talk about this one. the factual error. we were told, we all read the reports and the government was saying this was in response to the video and now it's just clear that it wasn't in response to the video. in fact, it was a pretty well premeditated plan. i've read some reports, that say 100 men overran the embassy with guns. this was a militarized attack. the question is, why the gap? why did the people who should have known not know? >> well -- >> you've been reporting oen this. >> within six hours from the attack a cia team went to benghazi and basically knew it was a terrorist attack and had an indication it was planned. that information was put-back to the u.s. government, right? the u.s. government as a whole entity knew -- >> that's big. known in the u.s. government is big. >> if i'm the white house i want to talk to whoever came off the plane from benghazi about what happened there. so you have that issue. so the idea of this was the video. there was a protest.

that was a shaky story immediately. within 24 hours we knew that that probably wasn't the case, at least anyone who was sort of repeated reading the reports and listening to it and just sort of common sense, right? when was there a 10:00 p.m. protest in the arab world on a tuesday? that was an issue. you can look at what the white house did as malicious. they wanted to put this story out to kick the can down the road to get through the election. what i think is more likely, it's wishful thinking, cherry picking, that happens to suit their strategic needs. >> amy. >> in the beginning the argument wasn't that it just was in response to the video but from the romney side that it was in response to a statement from the cairo embassy being slightly apologetic about, as they saw it, you know, not -- >> banging the drum. >> so the whole idea, the whole argument at the time was this attack happened because we apologized. >> sure. >> because we -- not just because these people saw a video

but because we responded to the video in a certain way. so i wonder a little bit what's happened to that. >> that's been thrown overboard. >> that's been taken for good reasons too. the romney administration -- the romney campaign is not being debriefed or shouldn't have access to people debriefing them on this. if you look at this time line, michael's been doing some amazing stuff on this, as has been my colleague and friend eli lake, really killing the story. he's out there at the very beginning showing that, you know, within as michael says, within a day, then we have people debriefing the state department in person coming back from libya. and they're still going out there after this and saying that it's because of the video. this time line here is not good for them. >> hold on one second. i want to hear more about that from you, goldie. i want to talk about this funding question and then this really broad, this really important question which is the deep thing here is that there are tradeoffs between security for diplomatic staff and their

ability to do effective diplomacy. when we boil this down to its essence as a policy choice, that's where i think we end up. we'll talk to someone who served in the foreign service and has some views on this right after we take this break. [ female announcer ] what's a powerful way to cut through everyday greasy messes?

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...to clean 2x more greasy dishes. dawn does more. so it's not a chore. goldie, you will something you wanted to say about the libya attack. >> i think all of us missed this, the romney campaign's narrative started much earlier than cairo and that cable that they wanted to put out. it started earlier in the day when romney was giving his speech -- his address on 9/11 before a group of veterans when he was, you know, running the rabbit on this administration being weaker on foreign policy questions that we are projecting. so he was just taking that narrative and stripping it through the night and the next daze day and, thus, polite sizing the deaths of four americans abroad. >> yeah, but the polite sizing, i agree that that statement was ridiculous. the tweets that night about the president -- that was -- that

actually i thought was a resignable offense saying that the president sim pa thieszed with the people. >> there are a lot of people that are nominally on romney and ryan's side that condemned this stuff. >> yes. >> but i want to separate. now there's this broader politization. we should know what the heck happened in libya. we should know about why there was this gap. when you want to talk about politics, what's striking to me is the absence of the state department from all of this. this is what's bizarre. this is state department facility. it's a state department employee. from my reporting in the state department, stevens and hillary were fairly close. there was a personal line. he was seen as an incredibly important member of the foreign service. he had a distinguished career. the libya intervention was a huge signature of the obama foreign policy. as soon as this happens, it's the white house, jay carney and susan rice out on the sunday shows who are doing all the defense of it and state is essentially nowhere to be found. susan rice after it's clear what

she was saying on the sunday shows waents true has to issue this statement. i was asked to provide the administration's latest understanding of what happened in benghazi. in answering i relied solely and squarely on the information the intelligence community provided to me and other senior u.s. officials including through the daily intelligence briefings that gives us the latest information to policy matters. i'm inclined to believe her because it seems like a bizarre strategy that sent her out there to lie. here aels secretary of state hillary clinton finally talking yesterday at a press conference. this is the first time she's come out. >> after two weeks of staying in the bunker. >> and rebuffing some requests from michael hastings. this is secretary of state hillary clinton talking about it. >> i do know this, there is nobody in the administration motivated by anything other than trying to understand what happened. to this day we do not have a complete picture.

we do not have all the answers. no one in this administration has ever claimed otherwise. every one of us has made clear that we are providing the best information we have at that time, and that information continues to be updated. obviously we know more as time goes by and we will know even more than we did hours and days after the attack so that's what an investigative process is designed to do, to try to sort through all of the information, some of it contradictory and conflicting. >> and let me say this. i mean, i think there is -- i read a former cia person wrote in the atlantic, this is messy. this is a horrific attack. when you read the background briefing from the state department about, you know, you think about chris stevens safe

from dying of smoke inhalation. it must have been incredibly chaotic in the aftermath. the facility was overwhelmed, burned to the ground. it doesn't seem implausible to believe that there was a tremendous amount of conflicting evidence. >> we couldn't get there for three weeks to investigate. the fbi team, we got run out of town in benghazi and we could not get our investigators back in until weeks later. >> i guess my point is the argument being made here is that this was just, you know, intelligence is messy and it fill theers up through the mast vast apparatuses of the american intelligence system. >> it isn't at all implausible to me that you would have a planned attack on this installation and at the same time, you know, prior -- you've got some dem administrations happening in another country. it is not at all implausible to me that -- >> intelligence completes the two. >> these two things conflict. >> there was a signal intelligence intercept. the people who planned the attack mentioned the demonstrations. >> yes. on this point, this is a very important point and a good thing

that eli reported. it is implausible. it's a very important thing that should be shot up the chain. it's not a matter of what people are saying, its a a matter of who are making these calls. the two people are known al qaeda, affiliates, minor league people of al qaeda. that is the important point. if they're saying in this call, this is sort of what we know now, is that, you know, maybe we should use the cover of the egyptian embassy business to launch our attack now. the egyptian embassy business is not the important point here. it's the two people that are having the coverinnversation ant they're plan to go do. >> there's a lot of fear about what this means for how they're going to do their job in the future and the pendulum of security. we're going to talk with a former diplomate after this break. [ male announcer ] feeling like a shadow of your former self?

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he served in the clinton administration. he also writes the blog peace fair.net. daniel, you wrote about this. there was a really good piece of reporting from josh church at the "huffington post" talking to diplomats who were talking about their fear that in the wake of this what we're going to see is increased security, increased barricading of american embassies and that those -- the increased security comes at the cost of doing effective diplomacy. how have you experienced that as a diplomat yourself? how do you experience that tradeoff on the ground? >> well, especially in iraq we see very clearly that the american diplomats are incarcerated and warehoused in an embassy. they're not out talking to the population. they're not meeting people as frequently as they should. they're not giving speeches, cutting ribbons, doing all of the things that need to be done if you're to develop a rapport not only with the host government but with the host

population and that's what diplomacy is all about is that comprehensive understanding of a society and, frankly, libya's a fairly friendly environment. this will surprise people. i've been there twice in the last year or so and i have to stop libyans from hugging me on the street when i say i'm an american. >> right. chris stevens was very well known for being incredibly present around tripoli and benghazi, for going for morning runs, for going to parties and breakfasts and doing all of the things that you just talked about. >> he was doing all the right things and there's no way to reduce risks to somebody who's doing the right things to zero. >> that -- >> you can manage the risk. you cannot completely zero out the risk. and this is extremely important for people to understand. this is a great tragedy as vice president biden said, but its a a tragedy that will happen every

once in a while because you can't have zero risk. >> i just think there's db obviously there's no perfect security but there's a difference. i agree, i'm not disagreeing. >> one of the things that got a little lost in the hearing about the security requests and there was apparently requests for more security, those security requests weren't even for benghazi, they were for tripoli. it's also unclear as a counter factual matters, we can't know this, whether the security that was requested would have been sufficient to stop what looks like now 100 men with guns over running and burning the embassy. >> i do wonder though, the idea of the libyans, they love us. okay. it raises the question of how well we really know what the libyans think, how well we know even at this point what's been going on in libya. in the debate paul ryan said, you know, why wasn't there a marine detachment in benghazi already? that's a whole other question. are they arguing that we should be sending in troops?

one reason we didn't is that the obama administration had sort of presented this as a done job and one that you didn't need to even invoke the war powers act for which you would have had to do with troops in some way. >> daniel, i'm curious -- >> the idea of marine guards is completely out of the question. marine guards are trained and equipped to protect the information inside an embassy or consulate. >> yes. part of the security detail. >> they are not equipped for personal protection. that's ridiculous. >> daniel, i want you to reconcile what amy just said, which i think is really important. reconcile the favorable treatment you've gotten in libya with the presence of these militias and what that says right after we take this quick break. [ female announcer ] new progresso recipe starters. five delicious cooking sauces you combine with fresh ingredients to make amazing home-cooked meals.

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where you don't back down from a challenge. this is the age of knowing how to make things happen. so, why let erectile dysfunction get in your way? talk to your doctor about viagra. 20 million men already have. ask your doctor if your heart is healthy enough for sex. do not take viagra if you take nitrates for chest pain; it may cause an unsafe drop in blood pressure. side effects include headache, flushing, upset stomach, and abnormal vision. to avoid long-term injury, seek immediate medical help for an erection lasting more than four hours. stop taking viagra and call your doctor right away if you experience a sudden decrease or loss in vision or hearing. this is the age of taking action. viagra. talk to your doctor. daniel serwer who served in the state department under president bill clinton. you've been to libya twice and talked about the enthusiasm. i have friends who have gone to libya and who were there actually during the revolution who say the same thing.

my question is how do we reconcile that with the fact that there seems to be a very well-organized armed jihadists who have pulled off the attack? >> you can have 99% of the population with you and the 1% of the population that isn't can kill your ambassador. >> yes, exactly. >> chris stevens met that morning with a libyan professor whom i have met with on the day of the elections in july, and he gave me quite a detailed account of the radical forces that existed in the benghazi region. i'm sure he had that same conversation with chris stevens that morning. people were aware of this radical presence. it mounted a much bigger attack than people expected, but i think you have to understand that the militias, which are often referred to as the problem, are also part of the solution. the guys guarding the embassy unfortunately without guns

because we didn't trust them yet enough to have guns were militia forces from the february 17th brigade, which is what protected the elections in benghazi as well. so this is a very complicated, confusing situation. it's not surprising that failure comes in a situation like this, but putting out people behind very high walls with lots of personal security details which they themselves have to be protected is not a formula for effective diplomacy. >> this point about the libyans who were guarding the embassy, a number of libyans died in this attack as well, we don't talk about that, these are libyans who are part of the militia -- they have been signed the role as the local guarantor of the security because people should keep in mind the first line of defense for security anywhere, any consulate and embassy is the

host country. we have people that will -- you know, we have cops outside embassies in the united states and so since there wasn't really a properly constituted libyan government, the role was given to the militia which were also overrun. >> right. i mean, look. big picture there's a cost in these interventions and the cost is always high and it's always unpredictable. you don't know when it's going to rear its ugly head. in terms of if one is responsible for protecting people within a facility, i've been in that position having been in charge of bureaus. we had one incident in baghdad where there was a sticky bomb outside the bureau. we raised the red alarm -- the red flags about it and then three weeks later the entire base and infrastructure was blown up. that was a situation in libya where you had different incidents. the state department should have responded. when your guys in the field are saying we're under threat, you have to respond. >> that might be the obama administration's main mistake in

libya, it was presented as a simple story. >> the president and vice president shouldn't be being briefed. >> when he said we, we meaning the president which of course that request does not get to the president and vice president. daniel serwer, thank you so much for joining us and sharing your insight. >> you're welcome. what do we know now that we didn't know last week? my answer is after this. tender white meat chicken and vegetables in a crust made from scratch. marie callender's. it's time to savor.

♪ ♪ just a moment what we know now what we didn't know last week. first a quick update on something one of our guests mentioned last week. we were discussing the independent foreclosure review, a program launched by federal regulators to compensate the victims of predatory lending practices. that suggested by the name the program is supposed to be insulated from the influence of the banks that engaged in those practices, particularly with respect to mortgage servicing, but a report by propublica this

week suggests that whether and how much to compensate victims is based on how much work the banks did themselves. as one employee told us, final decisions made by the independent foreclosure review are only a matter of double checking the bank's work. we have it on up with chris.tunnel bler.com. what do we know now? mitt romney doesn't know what he's talking about with respect to the deadly consequences of being uninsured. trapped as he wants between contradictory positions on health care, he reiterated his position on current status quo in which the uninshierd end up in emergency rooms. we don't have a setting across this country where if you don't have insurance we just say to you, tough luck, you're going to have to die when you have a heart attack. no. you go to the hospital, get treated, you get treatment and it's paid for. we don't have people that become ill who die in their apartment because they don't have insurance. we know back as governor of massachusetts this was precisely

the kind of high cost and haphazard care that romney care was designed to avoid and we also know it just flat isn't true that no one in america dies from being uninsured. in fact, a 2009 study from harvard found that nearly 45,000 deaths each year are tied to the lack of insurance. we know the romney the romney plan would ultimately leave an estimated 72,000 without insurance. and we know it would certainly not survive. we know there are lives on the line in this election. we now know in full grisly detail lance armstrong's doping. a new report from the anti-doping agency documents testimony from several of his teammates. the report shows payments of over a million dollars from an italian doctor accused of giving

armstrong performance-enhancing drugs. we know that cycling isn't alone. track and field as is major league baseball. in my book i wrote extenze ivgly about the let and i was struck by how easily a culture of intense competition with huge rewards for success and punishment for failure ka cause corner-cutting and cheating. it's presented as a model for all institutions to follow. we now know that mitt romney was intimately involved in developing a lucrative strategy to sell cigarettes in post soviet russia in the 1990s we now know a ceo of the bain consulting firm, helped them sell their products. we know there's nothing illegal about the concept of aiding a tobacco company in selling its

product but as farr as so much of other parts of his business record, just because something was within the bounds of the law that doing it was right or it's praise-worthy or makes one qualified to be president. coming up with clever ways to sell toxic deadly cigarettes as possible might make you a good capitalist but not a good person. >> i now know that joe biden has nothing on julia gillard, the prime minister of australia. i don't know if you've all seen the video of her just lashing out in the australian parliament. but what i also know is that that was a strangely effective. that there did need to be a conversation in australia about misogyny and sexism. >> explain the context. >> a member of her party got caught sending lewd texts to somebody who worked for him. he had previously been with the other party. he was sort of a swing vote in

the coalition. her -- the opposition leader tony abbott got up and was very outraged about this and said he's got to be fired right away. she got up and said i won't be lectured by tony abbott. if he wants to know what misogyny looks like in australia, he needs to look in the mirror. he had said in parliament, i believe, that she needed to make an honest woman of herself, she's not married. people in his party had called her barren. and she did not hold back at all sniet was an amazing disposition sni . >> it wasn't that australians have a culture. >> we'll post it on our tumbler. >> i now know now that i'm going to be a grandmother. >> congratulations. that's wonderful. >> i also know that this plate has a twitter feed and i'm

completely happy about that and it's smart. but i also know according to the nation"national journalnationalk at this. integrity of the polls are based on the integrity of the poll. well, this country, we are growing. i don't know how many. if you don't have a land line, automated dialling to cell phones is illegal, so two out of five don't have the ability to even be polled. >> this is a great tease for tomorrow and we're going to talk about the history of polling. we'll talk about polling and what polling can and can't tell us. michael hastings. >> i'm going to bring it back to benghazi. anderson cooper was interviewed one of the mothers of the victims, sean smith, she said after the white house and state promised her all this information about what happened

to her son, they did not even bother to basically return her phone calls. thank's disgraceful, i think it's unfortunate, a testament to how in these situations the bureaucracy tries. even at the expense of other human beings. it's better to sit down, take the risk, tell the family what's happening, even if they leak. you've got to do it. >> michael monaghan. >> i just want to say that this is not a pivot off of something that you said earlier is that i now know that the nobel peace prize committee, they gave a nonsense prize to not a nonsense tint but an undeserving entity that has not kept peace for 50 years. that was something that was done by nato and helped along by the u.s. and british military incidentally. >> you know, it's funny, i was

defending. basically the conservatives were saying it was ridiculous. people to my left were saying it's ridiculous. it's like this boring bureaucratic edifice that no one likes. >> my objection is it's a forward looking thing saying will you please -- >> make sheer we don't see golden dawn take over greece. >> evan's digging into the bakery plate. michael hastings is now eating. michael moynihan. thank you for joining us today for up. join us tomorrow morning at 8:00 when i'll have the founder of staples and nate silver, mastermind of the 538 blog polling. coming up next is melissa harris-perry. insindhaire billboards spreading out through ohio, mostly in minority communities. who's behind it and what is being done. that's millilitelissa harris-pe

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